Status: 08.06.2022 1:20 p.m
At least 21 people have died in a train derailment in Iran. Numerous others were injured. According to initial reports, the train collided with an excavator near the tracks.
At least 21 people have died in a train crash in Iran. The Iranian media reported this, citing the governor of the region in the east of the country, Ali Akbar Rahimi. At least 50 other people were injured and more than a dozen are in critical condition, it said. The number of victims could still rise.
According to reports, there were about 350 passengers on the train. It derailed on the route between the pilgrimage city of Mashhad and the desert city of Yasd. According to initial reports, the train collided with an excavator near the tracks.
Five wagons derailed
Images from the Iranian news agency Isna showed wagons lying on their sides amid dust. Rescue workers rushed to the scene of the accident about 50 kilometers from the desert city of Tabas. Tabas is located about 550 kilometers southeast of the capital Tehran.
Helicopters were also deployed to rescue the seriously injured. Several hundred passengers are said to have been on the train. According to the national aid and rescue organization, five of the seven cars jumped off the track.
State television also released footage from a hospital where the injured were being treated. One of them reported that the train suddenly braked and slowed before derailing. The passengers flew “like balls through the air,” he reported.
In 2016, 44 people died in a train accident
In 2016, there was also a serious train accident in northern Iran. 44 people died when two trains collided and caught fire. At that time, the rescue work was also made more difficult by the fact that the scene of the accident was in a remote region.
The worst rail accident in Iran occurred in 2004 when a freight train carrying chemicals exploded near Nishabur, killing more than 300 people.